Uranium mining on Diné and Havasupai lands in what we call Arizona has killed generations of First People. Mining and transportation of uranium poisons the well water, animals and people. On October 1st 2018, a final decision by the US Supreme Court upheld the ban and refuses to listen to an appeals from the mining companies. Although, we celebrate this triumph, mining companies have refused to adequately remediate inactive mining sites that continue to expose First People to toxic uranium dust.

Self Help Graphics & Art is a non-profit arts organization that I have been volunteering for almost 10 years. They are credited with bringing Día de los muertos to Los Angeles in 1973 and every year they have been charging an artist with the task to create a commemorative print. Like any organization, they have gone through trials and tribulations in the past years but they have secured a new space in Boyle Heights, the neighborhood I grew up in.

To justify war, St. Augustine wrote that the sovereign ruler of the state has the authority to wage war and that those subject to the authority of the sovereign are duty bound to fight in the sovereign's war, even if it is unjust. Further, he went on to say that God has perfect justice to direct those wars to be fought. It seems that the tenets from a Doctor and Father of the Church of the days of early Christianity are still in use today to justify wars abroad.

Tumbling somewhere between a small town in México and the City of Los Angeles, are the skeletons of those who traverse borders. During the Día de los muertos, the dead are said to be allowed to cross the divide between the living and the dead to join their loved ones in celebration. How then will such a scenario play out for the millions of people that have loved ones on both sides?

Flying over the Castillo de Chapultepec and a Mexico City skyline complete with the volcanoes, Popocatépetl and Itzaccihuatl is a skeleton wrapped in the fiery shroud of a comet while it is observed from the Old Observatory by a smaller skeleton with telescope. This print was commissioned by typographer Oscar Yanez for his typeface Calavera which was produced by his type foundry, Cocijo Type.

Frida Kahlo in her diary noted that she felt that she embodied disintegration. Her dying wish was that her mortal remains be cremated. During the cremation, she was dressed in a huipil dress and laid on the gurney to the oven. Diego in his memoirs would comment that, "As the cries of her admirers filled the room, a sudden blast of heat from the open incinerator doors caused her body to bolt upright. Her hair, now on fire from the flames, blazed around her head like a halo. Frida's lips appeared to break into a seductive grin just as the doors closed."